“Fine. We’ll need to prep a briefing packet. Background, boundaries, theno description of spacespage, again.”
“Simone can do it verbally,” I say. “If I hand her paper, she’ll bring it to the studio and draw a floor plan while we’re arguing about a comma.”
Mara doesn’t smile, but something near her mouth acknowledges the truth. “We also have donors at eleven,” she says. “A secure roundtable. Whitcomb, Hargreaves, the Holloway Trust. I’d like you on for the first fifteen minutes to lay out ‘impact’ with your voice and then get off before Hargreaves derails us into KPIs. They want a ‘case study.’ We’re not giving them one.”
“I’ll open,” I say. “I’ll give them bodies saved and kitchen floors cleaned and a number that sounds big enough to make them feel important without being a lie. Then I’ll leave and let you be the adult in the room.”
“Finally,” Mara says, flipping to her last bullet, “the press. We’ve had three requests for comment on Ms. Hale’s residency.One from a critic who can’t decide if he hates her for using red. One from a magazine that wants to photograph her ‘in the space where the art happens.’ One from a blogger who is going to write whatever he wants regardless.”
“No press on-site,” I say. “No photos. If they want quotes, they get the stock language you wrote last month. If they push, they get nothing. If they show up at the gate, they meet a gate that doesn’t open.”
“Copy,” she says, then sets the tablet down and gives me the look she gives when she’s about to say something that will make the rest of the day easier and me angrier. “Cassian,” she starts, “the residency access, if you’re going to move her up, you have to decide whether you’re doing it because it’s good for us or because it’s good for you. If it’s both, fine. If it’s not, I need to know which one I’m being asked to defend.”
I hold her gaze. She’s earned the truth, and the only version of it I will say aloud in this room is the one that doesn’t require me to admit that the line betweengood for usandgood for meis not a line this morning.
“It’s good for us,” I say. “And it’s the fastest way to make her stop painting doorways she thinks are metaphors. I want her hearing what she draws.”
“Then do it,” she says. “And don’t stage-manage it until it stops being true.”
She closes her pad. That’s the meeting. She’ll go offend an oligarch for me and call it stewardship. Reid will make sure Navarro’s alley stays a construction site and not a trap. I will go do the part of this work that any man who uses the wordprotectionshould have to do before he gets to use it in public.
The clinic smells like antiseptic, coffee, and the kind of laundry scent that only lives in places where sheets get changed three times in a day. The intake room we use when we don’t know who we’re hosting is plain and quiet. No art on the walls. Acot. A chair for a person who won’t sit. A table with a pitcher of water and a stack of cheap cups because the nice ones go missing or get broken and I don’t want anyone in this building to feel bad for breaking something. The nurse on morning is Imani. She nods at me and doesn’t sayhe’s in therebecause she knows I know how to read the room.
R sits on the cot, knees drawn up, shoes still on. He has the posture of a kid who hasn’t decided which part of himself he hates most today. He is wearing a gray hoodie. His eyes flick past me and away when I step into the doorway.
“I’m Cass,” I say from a distance that lets him choose. “I work here.”
He looks at the floor first. Then he looks at the ceiling. Then he looks at the door because he wants to know if I’m going to block it. I don’t move from where I am.
“I think you’re thirsty,” I observe. “If I’m wrong, I’ll apologize.”
He doesn’t answer. He watches my hands. I walk to the table like I’m getting my own drink. I fill a cup and set it on the floor halfway between us, near the edge of the cot. Then I sit down on the floor next to it. My knees complain the way they always do. I let them. The floor is clean enough and I’m not too proud to be below a kid who needs me to be small.
We don’t talk for a minute. He looks at the cup twice before he touches it. He drinks like the water is punishment and relief at once. Half the cup goes down. He stops and watches to see if I’m going to comment. I don’t.
“I didn’t take nothing,” he says in the kind of hoarse voice that belongs to boys who are trying not to cry with their throats. “I didn’t—” He stops.
“I don’t care what you didn’t take,” I say. “I care whether your ribs hurt.”
He lifts his hand to his side without thinking. He winces when his fingers find the bruise that tells the truth.
“Okay,” I say. “That’s a yes.”
He looks at me like he wishes he hadn’t given me that information. His shoes squeak as he shifts his feet on the bed frame. He’s wearing both shoes and both socks. Sometimes kids come in with one shoe gone. Both shoes means he kept himself together long enough to hold on to something.
“You want a shower?” I ask. “You can keep your shoes on if you need to.”
He looks at the bathroom door and I see the panic beat once behind his eyes. Bathroom doors are where things happen. He shakes his head.
“Fine,” I say. “We can wait.”
He pulls his sleeves down over his hands again. The cuff catches at a torn nail. He sucks a breath in when it snags. He’s trying not to show it. I don’t let the moment turn into pity.
“You want to know what happens next?” I ask.
He shrugs.
“You sit here as long as you want,” I say. “This is a place where no one is asking you to talk to a cop unless you ask us to make that happen. We’ll feed you. We’ll give you a bed. When your body decides it’s ready to let down, it will. When it does, it’ll feel like the end of the world for about ten seconds and then it’ll feel like someone carried a bag off your chest and didn’t ask you to pay for the privilege.”
